Anime Hajime Review: Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?

Original Run: July 13, 2019 - September 28, 2019
Number of Episodes: 12
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy, Isekai
Based on the Series Created By: Dachima Inaka and 
Pochi

***Warning, the following may contain spoilers for Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?. Reader discretion is advised.***

Series Synopsis

For many children, the thought of grand adventures and epic quests fill their dreams and imagination. They picture themselves as the ultimate hero tasked with saving the land from danger. The exact details of these daydreams vary from person to person, but most, if any, involve their mother joining them on their journey.

For Masato Oosuki (voiced by Haruki Ishiya), though, he finds himself in such an unlikely scenario.

Masato agrees to join the beta program for an upcoming MMORPG. The twist is, he will actually be transported into the game world. However, unbeknownst to him, Masato will be accompanied by his mother, Mamako (voiced by Ai Kayano).

Although he is on the adventure he has always wanted, Masato is annoyed not only by his mother’s presence but by the fact that she is ridiculously more powerful than him. For Mamako, she is just happy to be spending time with her son.

Series Positives

Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks? (Okaasan Online), in the best way I can think to say this, was a potentially solid parody series that fell victim to an onslaught of poor decisions. I won’t act like I was disappointed with this show. Truth be told, I wasn’t expecting much from it, and any general interest in it dropped when I realized it was yet another take on the isekai genre.

I’m going to take a risk and not bog this review down with defining what an isekai anime is. May I take the liberty to assume that if you are reading you are either acquainted with isekai series or you have been following my posts long enough for me to have given its definition so many times that you must think me crazy for having dedicated so much of my time to these sort of shows.

And if this is, indeed, your first exposure to the isekai genre, then let me encourage you to stop reading here and check out my reviews of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime or The Rising of the Shield Hero. Both those shows were brilliant examples of isekai anime, and they will go a long way into explaining why Okaasan Online fell flat on its face.

Before we ultimately cast off this show, I need to make it clear that Okaasan Online wasn’t trash. It might have been problematic, but it wasn’t a spectacular trainwreck either. For starters, this series was well animated. Or, more to the point, this series wasn’t plagued with horrendously awful CGI. Everything looked smooth, actions were big and impactful, there were plenty of colors that gave life to this story’s world, and if I only judged an anime on the quality of its animation, then I would be giving Okaasan Online a full recommendation.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you want to look at it, I only consider animation and visuals to be secondary concerns. I always prefer to focus on a show’s story and characters. So in that respect, how was Okaasan Online?

Well, for the moment lets put the story on the back burner, but in case I forget to bring it up again (which should give you a pretty good idea my thoughts on it) let me just say:

The story of Okaasan Online was a less than average narrative that has been done to death by countless isekai anime before it, and that its reliance on a single gimmick didn’t come close to saving it from obscurity. The only thing of note that I can say in its favor is that this series had the decency to openly mock the ridiculousness of isekai stories. Okaasan Online never let you forget that its world was that of a video game and that all the player characters were there voluntarily and were mostly around to bug test gameplay before the future release.

So much for the back burner, I guess.

As for this show’s characters, I can actually be a bit more positive. Of the main adventuring group, I really did like Wise and Medhi (voiced respectively by Sayumi Suzushiro and Lynn). Of the primary party, they had the most development of anyone, and their backstories were the most interesting.

Both Wise and Medhi came to participate in the game’s beta because they did want to better their relationships with their mothers. But like Mamako, Wise and Medhi’s mothers became ridiculously overpowered, and the problems that strained their relationships with their daughters in the real world exploded into real crises.

For Wise, her mother felt lingering regret about becoming a mom. To her, Wise was nothing more than a hindrance that prevented her from doing all the things she once did freely. When in the game, Wise’s mother quickly abandoned the original goal when she realized she had the power to do whatever she wanted.

For Medhi, her mother was overcontrolling. If Medhi was anything less than number one, than Medhi’s mother considered her an unacceptable failure. Although Medhi’s mom claimed her actions were for her daughter’s benefit, it was soon evident that everything stemmed from a desire for self-satisfaction.

For Wise and Medhi, there was tension between them and their respective mothers that simply didn’t exist between Mamako and her son Masato.

However, while all that was nice, none of it was enough to turn Okaasan Online into anything worth watching.

Series Negatives

There was one potential issue with Okaasan Online that I was afraid would ruin this series if it chose to implement it. And implement it this series did, and sure enough, it was as awkward as I thought it would be. I’ll give you a moment to guess what I might be talking about if you haven’t already come to the same conclusion I had.

In the meantime, let’s talk about Masato.

Without question, Masato was the most annoying character of the entire series. Compared to what was going on between Wise, Medhi, and their mothers, it wasn’t hard to see Masato as a bit of an ungrateful brat.

Now, to a degree, I will admit that saying such a thing is a little unfair. Although the tensions Wise and Medhi were experiencing were more universal in terms of severity, we shouldn’t disregard the tensions that existed between Masato and Mamako.

To give Masato some slack, Mamako, was overbearing in her own way. She seemed unwilling to treat her son as a teenager. Looking through Masato’s perspective, it would be troublesome to have a mother who always wanted to push her way into business that wasn’t hers. Mamako might have been loving, caring, and supportive of her son, but rarely allowed him some much-needed independence. Does that excuse Masato’s harshness towards his mother? Not at all, but it does put it in context.

However, when Masato never got it through his head that he was a colossal dick to his mother, that became a problem. No matter how many times Masato “realized” how badly his actions and words affected his mother, he would forget his realizations by the next episode and say something equally hurtful.

Be all that as it may, everything positive or negative about Okaasan Online was rendered moot for one reason.

Imagine the typical anime fanservice scenarios:

• Accidental groping
• Tight/Revealing clothing
• Characters awkwardly falling on top of each other
• Unabashed affection

Yeah, think of all that, and put in place a boy and his mother.

Once I realized that was the type of show Okaasan Online was going to be, there was no saving it.

Final Thoughts

If we were to look at this series at a purely technical level, it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t the terrible either.

This series did have good animation. There were a few decent characters. The satirical nature this story had towards the isekai genre wasn’t outstanding, but it was appreciated. There were problems with the overall execution, so it can’t be said this was the worst anime of 2019.

But for what I think is a pretty damn obvious reason, I will not recommend this show.

Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks? can be skipped.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? Have you seen this show? How would you advise Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?? Leave a comment down below because I would love to hear what you have to say.

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For Anime Hajime, I’m LofZOdyssey, and I’ll see you next time.